Red tape has driven me out, says clone pioneer

The professor who cloned the first human embryo in the West said yesterday that red tape and a lack of funds had driven him to leave Britain for a better-funded post abroad.

The Prime Minister has declared that the Government wants to make Britain the "science capital of the world".

But "there is too much talk and too little action", said Prof Miodrag Stojkovic who, with colleagues at Newcastle University, announced in May that they had cloned a human embryo.

Yesterday, Prof Stojkovic explained why he and his wife, Petra, a technician, took up the offer from the Prince Felipe Research Centre, in Valencia, Spain, where he will be become deputy director and lead its regenerative medicine effort from January.

Britain was proud of how it regulated stem cell research "but forgot the other important factors, notably financial support", said Prof Stojkovic. He would have stayed if it had "got its act together".

Even though the effort at Newcastle has grown rapidly, Prof Stojkovic estimates that Valencia remains at least three years ahead.

There is huge potential in stem cells, which can be turned into all 200-plus types in the body to treat Parkinson's, heart disease and many other ailments.

The most successful team in cloning human embryos, based at Seoul National University, has been given £11 million funding while California is to invest £1.7 billion in stem cell research in the next decade. The Newcastle effort to clone human embryos was backed with only £250,000.

The Department of Health has set up the UK Stem Cell Initiative which, according to one committee member, is considering increasing the British commitment by £10 million annually for work on stem cells.

The Department of Health said that the initiative would report "in the autumn" on what had to be done to maintain Britain's world lead in stem cell research, adding that research councils had earmarked at least £40 million in funding.

But time is running out. At the end of 2004, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were told by one venture capitalist in the initiative that Britain had "a maximum of a year to get this right" if it was not to lose out on its stem cell research.

"It is very frustrating to see that other people, because of different regulation and governmental support, are running away from us," said Prof Stojkovic.

For his efforts to clone a human embryo with Prof Alison Murdoch, as part of research on diabetes, it took nine months to receive a licence in Britain, compared with nine days in South Korea, he said. Permission was given only to clone healthy cells, when the real aim was to clone those from a patient with Type 1 diabetes. That took another eight months to obtain.

British scientists expend much energy competing with each other rather than the rest of the world. Funding is so scarce and competition so fierce that a grant application can be sabotaged by an unsympathetic "referee" from a rival group.

When it became known that Prof Stojkovic was leaving, Prof Christopher Edwards, the vice-chancellor of Newcastle University, said: "His move confirms our belief that if we are to both attract and keep world-class scientists in the UK we have to offer them the best facilities."